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| A view of Lee Bae's solo exhibition "Paradigm of Charcoal" at Perrotin Hong Kong / Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin Hong Kong |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
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| Artist Lee Bae |
The "Paradigm of Charcoal" exhibit features a wide range of Lee's charcoal works, from the energetic "Untitled" series to the minimal "Brushstroke" series, showing how the artist explores the many hues of black that are possible through the material.
Born in Cheongdo, North Gyeongsang Province, in 1956, Lee studied fine arts at Hongik University, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees there. Lee moved to Paris in 1990 and now divides his time between Paris, Seoul and Cheongdo.
Lee has employed charcoal as his main artistic medium since his arrival in Paris, discovering the profound black of charcoal in myriad ways. For Lee, charcoal is a metaphor for the cycle of life, as it is obtained by burning wood and used to revive fire with a lot of energy in it.
Lee's black-and-white works inherit the spiritual and transcendent qualities of "Dansaekhwa," or Korean monochrome painting from the 1970s. Lee studied under Dansaekhwa master Park Seo-bo and was also influenced by the other renowned Dansaekhwa artist, Lee U-fan, while in Paris.
"Just like many other post-Dansaekhwa artists who have studied in the United States and Europe, Lee regards art not only as a praxis of self-contemplation, but also as an agent to represent the artist's consciousness, revealing a different stream of thoughts, compared to the first-generation artists," curator and art critic Cusson Cheng said of how Lee's use of charcoal demonstrates experiments by second-generation Dansaekhwa artists.
Lee's iconic "Issu du feu" series, which means "from fire" in English, is created by putting charcoal pieces on a canvas and grinding the surface. Lee makes the charcoal he uses by himself, by burning pine trees in a kiln at his studio in Cheongdo, which adds another contemplative layer to his works through his labor-intensive approach toward art.
Art historian Lorand Hegyi said that it is difficult to appreciate fully Lee's works outside of the historical and socio-cultural context of Korea.
"His stance may be understood within the framework of the artist's discourse, wherein the Korean perspective of present-day realities and human competencies, man's position in relation to nature, materiality, time and also history ― in the sense of activity, change, human intervention and the traces it leaves behind ― have an immediate impact on his painterly techniques and fundamental aesthetic directions," Hegyi wrote.
In 2000, Lee was named Artist of the Year by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, and in 2018, and he received the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, in recognition for his artistic career bridging the two countries.
The exhibition runs through Sept. 11 at Perrotin Hong Kong.
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